Torch Ceremony Quotes

The fervor and single-mindedness of this deification probably have no precedent in history. It's not like Duvalier or Assad passing the torch to the son and heir. It surpasses anything I have read about the Roman or Babylonian or even Pharaonic excesses. An estimated $2.68 billion was spent on ceremonies and monuments in the aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death. The concept is not that his son is his successor, but that his son is his reincarnation. North Korea has an equivalent of Mount Fuji—a mountain sacred to all Koreans. It's called Mount Paekdu, a beautiful peak with a deep blue lake, on the Chinese border. Here, according to the new mythology, Kim Jong Il was born on February 16, 1942. His birth was attended by a double rainbow and by songs of praise (in human voice) uttered by the local birds. In fact, in February 1942 his father and mother were hiding under Stalin's protection in the dank Russian city of Khabarovsk, but as with all miraculous births it's considered best not to allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.

She made him want to be better. She always had, from the first. But when she left him, he’d be lost all over again. It would never work, unless . . . Unless he didn’t let her go. Keep her close. Make her stay. Make her yours. He dragged her into his arms and kissed her. There was no more contemplation in his mind. No more logic or reason or sense. Only a wild impulse that roared to life inside him and pounded in his blood like an ancient drum. One his cave-dwelling ancestors likely pounded in some torch-lit mating ceremony followed by a buffet of raw antelope. Each beat resonated as a primal urge. Want. Need. Take. Claim. Mine.

Come Come, even with anguish, even to torture my heart; Come, even if only to abandon me to torment again. Come, if not for our past commerce, Then to faithfully fulfill the ancient barbaric rituals. Who else can recite the reasons for our separation? Come, despite your reluctance, to continue the litanies, the ceremony. Respect, even if only a little, the depth of my love for you; Come, someday, to offer me consolation as well. Too long you have deprived me of the pathos of longing; Come again, my love, if only to make me weep. Till now, my heart still suffers some slight expectation; So come, snuff out even the last flickering torch of hope

melanin is memory. is the blue weight of the ocean. sewn into the red dusk of sky. living in the soil of your body. it is alive. leaping and sweeping you. against. into the sun. your skin was the first astronaut. the first in space. you touch. talk. are intimate with the sun. everyday. and do not perish. melanin. is the world. before this world. before the word. slave. during the word. slave. after the word. slave. it is the books. written into yourself. wild math in the pads of your feet. soft science in your hair. language down your back. invention in your mouth. melanin is why you are still alive. after. the torching. it is a second lung. the next heart. and the next heart. and the next. a never ending. regenerative. breathing thing. a ceremony of life. while you are asleep. a cosmos. in conversation. immortal. melanin is a wisdom that knew. hate would be the anti light come to devour. defile. destroy. a wisdom that did not flinch. a wisdom that is not bothered by such things. melanin is memory. future memory. past memory. your memory. the memory of life. all. in your skin. — melanin

My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory." I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each. I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one's head—useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there—in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man's premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been in many men's houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one.

The traditional Roman wedding was a splendid affair designed to dramatize the bride’s transfer from the protection of her father’s household gods to those of her husband. Originally, this literally meant that she passed from the authority of her father to her husband, but at the end of the Republic women achieved a greater degree of independence, and the bride remained formally in the care of a guardian from her blood family. In the event of financial and other disagreements, this meant that her interests were more easily protected. Divorce was easy, frequent and often consensual, although husbands were obliged to repay their wives’ dowries. The bride was dressed at home in a white tunic, gathered by a special belt which her husband would later have to untie. Over this she wore a flame-colored veil. Her hair was carefully dressed with pads of artificial hair into six tufts and held together by ribbons. The groom went to her father’s house and, taking her right hand in his, confirmed his vow of fidelity. An animal (usually a ewe or a pig) was sacrificed in the atrium or a nearby shrine and an Augur was appointed to examine the entrails and declare the auspices favorable. The couple exchanged vows after this and the marriage was complete. A wedding banquet, attended by the two families, concluded with a ritual attempt to drag the bride from her mother’s arms in a pretended abduction. A procession was then formed which led the bride to her husband’s house, holding the symbols of housewifely duty, a spindle and distaff. She took the hand of a child whose parents were living, while another child, waving a hawthorn torch, walked in front to clear the way. All those in the procession laughed and made obscene jokes at the happy couple’s expense. When the bride arrived at her new home, she smeared the front door with oil and lard and decorated it with strands of wool. Her husband, who had already arrived, was waiting inside and asked for her praenomen or first name. Because Roman women did not have one and were called only by their family name, she replied in a set phrase: “Wherever you are Caius, I will be Caia.” She was then lifted over the threshold. The husband undid the girdle of his wife’s tunic, at which point the guests discreetly withdrew. On the following morning she dressed in the traditional costume of married women and made a sacrifice to her new household gods. By the late Republic this complicated ritual had lost its appeal for sophisticated Romans and could be replaced by a much simpler ceremony, much as today many people marry in a registry office. The man asked the woman if she wished to become the mistress of a household (materfamilias), to which she answered yes. In turn, she asked him if he wished to become paterfamilias, and on his saying he did the couple became husband and wife.

Controversy remains about what kind of ceremony is carried out in Ge 15:9–21. What/whom do the pieces represent (possibilities: sacrifice for oath, God if he reneges, nations already as good as dead, Israelites in slavery)? Whom do the birds of prey represent (nations seeking to seize available land, e.g., Ge 14, or to plunder Israel)? Whom do the implements represent (God and/or Abram)? These issues cannot currently be resolved, but a few observations can help identify some of the possible connections with the ancient world. Before we look at the options, a word is in order about what this is not. 1. It is not a sacrifice. There is no altar, no offering of the animals to deity and no ritual with the carcasses, the meat or the blood. 2. It is not divination. The entrails are not examined and no meal is offered to deity. 3. It is not an incantation. No words are spoken to accompany the ritual and no efficacy is sought—Abram is asleep. The remaining options are based on where animals are ritually slaughtered in the ancient world when it is not for the purposes of sacrifice, divination or incantation. Option 1: A covenant ceremony or, more specifically, a royal land grant ceremony. In this case the animals typically are understood as substituting for the participants or proclaiming a self-curse if the stipulations are violated. Examples of the slaughter of animals in such ceremonies but not for sacrificial purposes are numerous. In tablets from Alalakh, the throat of a lamb is slit in connection to a deed executed between Abba-El and Yarimlim. In a Mari text, the head of a donkey is cut off when sealing a formal agreement. In an Aramaic treaty of Sefire, a calf is cut in two with the explicit statement that such will be the fate of the one who breaks the treaty. In Neo-Assyrian literature, the head of a spring lamb is cut off in a treaty between Ashurnirari V and Mati’ilu, not for sacrifice but explicitly as an example of punishment. The strength of these examples lies in the contextual connection to covenant. The weakness is that only one animal is killed in these examples, and there is no passing through the pieces and no torch and firepot. Furthermore, there are significant limitations regarding the efficacy of a divine self-curse. Option 2: Purification. The “torch” (Ge 15:17) is a portable, handheld object for bringing light. The “smoking firepot” (15:17) can refer to a number of different vessels used to heat things (e.g., an oven for food, a kiln for pottery). Here the two items are generally assumed to be associated with God, but need not be symbolic representations of him. These implements are occasionally used symbolically to represent deities in ancient Near Eastern literature, but usually sun-gods (e.g., Shamash) or fire-gods (e.g., Girru/Gibil). Gibil and Kusu are often invoked together as divine torch and censer in a wide range of cultic ceremonies for purification. Abram would have probably been familiar with the role of Gibil and Kusu in purification rituals, so that function would be plausibly communicated to him by the presence of these implements. Yet in a purification role, neither the torch nor the censer ever pass between the pieces of cut-up animals in the literature available to us. Further weakness is in the fact that Yahweh doesn’t need purification and Abram is a spectator, not a participant, so neither does he. In the Mesopotamian Hymn to Gibil (the torch), the god purifies the objects used in the ritual, but the only objects in the ritual in Ge 15 are the dead animals, and it is difficult to understand why they would need to be purified.

If you have been in the street in Paris or Rouen, and seen a mother pull her child by the hand, and say, “Stop that squalling, or I’ll fetch an Englishman,” you are inclined to believe that any accord between the countries is formal and transient. The English will never be forgiven for the talent for destruction they have always displayed when they get off their own island. English armies laid waste to the land they moved through. As if systematically, they performed every action proscribed by the codes of chivalry, and broke every one of the laws of war. The battles were nothing; it was what they did between the battles that left its mark. They robbed and raped for forty miles around the line of their march. They burned the crops in the fields, and the houses with the people inside them. They took bribes in coin and in kind and when they were encamped in a district they made the people pay for every day on which they were left unmolested. They killed priests and hung them up naked in the marketplaces. As if they were infidels, they ransacked the churches, packed the chalices in their baggage, fueled their cooking fires with precious books; they scattered relics and stripped altars. They found out the families of the dead and demanded that the living ransom them; if the living could not pay, they torched the corpses before their eyes, without ceremony, without a single prayer, disposing of the dead as one might the carcasses of diseased cattle.

The typical self-centered goals of a young Midwestern white man were absent. I had no interest in McMansions, Rolexes, or Range Rovers. I just liked to get fucked up and fuck things and other people up.               Maybe I was looking for something to believe in when the planets aligned to set me down that path. I was drawn to racist ideology because I felt like white people were getting shafted. We were the underdogs. It was us against the world in an epic battle for forever. Such romance! Yes, I have a tendency to make it sound that way, which I guess is really just getting back in that moment, because the taint we cast upon reality definitely had that saga feel. And that was by design. Hitler did it with the torch-lit ceremony and iconic swastika. It felt like you were Beowulf, Siegfried, and Conan all rolled into one. Just a big fucking game of Dungeons & Dragons, till death and prison inevitably show up. Then the shit is real. Then comes the real challenge, the true test of will.

After the ceremonies and the feasting, there was the usual procession to the bridal chamber, with the usual torches and vulgar jokes and drunken yelling. The bed had been garlanded, the threshold sprinkled, the libations poured. The gatekeeper had been posted to keep the bride from rushing out in horror, and to stop her friends from breaking down the door and rescuing her when they heard her scream. All of this was play-acting: the fiction was that the bride had been stolen, and the consummation of a marriage was supposed to be a sanctioned rape. It was supposed to be a conquest, a trampling of a foe, a mock killing. There was supposed to be blood.

I felt weak, but I mustered the strength to continue the ceremony and said, “Our work as educators is to cultivate love for human beings, for justice, truth, and hard work. Love is the foundation of everything we are. We are born in love, our mothers and fathers raise us by love, we learn how to love, and this shapes us into true human beings. Justice is what allows us to live together. Justice is our defense against the evil actions of others. Truth is like a torch that guides us through dark nights and one day will defeat all the shadows. We work together as one for food, but above all for unity. The forces of hatred will never break our spirits. May God keep us all.

In 2007 the NAACP held a symbolic funeral for the word “nigger.” I don’t think this has led to any reduced usage of the word, but the idea inspired me. Since then, I’ve wanted to hold an actually meaningful ceremony making the destruction of racism the official responsibility of white people. It would be like passing off the Olympic torch. You could literally have a black person holding a flaming baton whose dancing flames spell RACISM, and he or she would hand it to a white person, and then it would be their problem. We could stream it on the Internet!

The designated occasion for clearing Babylonia’s financial slate was the New Year festival, celebrated in the spring. Babylonian rulers oversaw the ritual of “breaking the tablets,” that is, the debt records, restoring economic balance as part of the calendrical renewal of society along with the rest of nature. Hammurabi and his fellow rulers signaled these proclamations by raising a torch, probably symbolizing the sun-god of justice Shamash, whose principles were supposed to guide wise and fair rulers. Persons held as debt pledges were released to rejoin their families. Other debtors were restored cultivation rights to their customary lands, free of whatever mortgage liens had accumulated.15 Over the next several thousand years, this same list—canceling the debts, destroying the records, reallocating the land—was to become the standard list of demands of peasant revolutionaries everywhere. In Mesopotamia, rulers appear to have headed off the possibility of unrest by instituting such reforms themselves, as a grand gesture of cosmic renewal, a recreation of the social universe—in Babylonia, during the same ceremony in which the king reenacts his god Marduk’s creation of the physical universe. The history of debt and sin was wiped out, and it was time to begin again. But it’s also clear what they saw as the alternative: the world plunged into chaos, with farmers defecting to swell the ranks of nomadic pastoralists, and ultimately, if the breakdown continued, returning to overrun the cities and destroy everything.

The unsuspicious testimony of Bishop Hay leaves no doubt on this point: "It" [the water kept in the baptismal font], says he, "is blessed on the eve of Pentecost, because it is the Holy Ghost who gives to the waters of baptism the power and efficacy of sanctifying our souls, and because the baptism of Christ is 'with the Holy Ghost, and with fire' (Matt. iii. 11). In blessing the waters, a LIGHTED TORCH is put into the font." Here, then, it is manifest that the baptismal regenerating water of Rome is consecrated just as the regenerating and purifying water of the Pagans was. Of what avail is it for Bishop Hay to say, with the view of sanctifying superstition and "making apostasy plausibly," that this is due "to represent the fire of Divine love, which is communicated to the soul by baptism, and the light of good example, which all who are baptised ought to give." This is the fair face put on the matter; but the fact still remains that while the Romish doctrine in regard to baptism is purely Pagan, in the ceremonies connected with the Papal baptism one of the essential rites of the ancient fire-worship is still practised at this day, just as it was practised by the worshippers of Bacchus, the Babylonian Messiah.

The lights had been shut off for the ceremony, and torches had been brought in – when I say torches, I mean the creepy kind with flames, rather than the useful kind with batteries.

Maybe I was looking for something to believe in when the planets aligned to set me down that path. I was drawn to racist ideology because I felt like white people were getting shafted. We were the underdogs. It was us against the world in an epic battle for forever. Such romance! Getting back in that moment, the taint we cast upon reality definitely had that saga feel. Hitler did it with the torch-lit ceremony and iconic swastika. It felt like you were Beowulf, Siegfried, and Conan all rolled into one. Just a big fucking game of Dungeons & Dragons, till death and prison inevitably show up. Then the shit is real. Then comes the real challenge, the true test of will. Do you back down then? Are you a coward? Or just a fool? That's when you gather all the suffering you can endure and produce and you devour it, because it's the only thing that nourishes you anymore. And you let that fire rage on till it's all you can see. You damn well can't see how burnt and disfigured it makes you-how it scorches your life. It's impossible to see how the hurt you emanate feels on the receiving end, because you no empathy for other humans. Even your own crew is barren of empathy for each other. You would die for your brothers and sisters, but you are unable to put yourself in their shoes. You don't really care about or understand their individual hopes and dreams, because like you, they have none outside of the movement. Your feeling for them is one of primal pack-mentality. Survival melded with a perverted sense of honor that won't permit you to suffer insult to them any more than to yourself.

Two debuted at Los Angeles: the introduction of the now familiar medal ceremony, with national anthems and a three-tiered podium; and the creation of an Olympic village, not just as a practical solution to an accommodation problem, but as a stage for the production of Olympic tableaux and messages. Berlin completed the curious evolution of the modern Olympics’ use of mythic fire with the staging of a torch relay from Olympia to the host city.

The Scots were unconquerable foes. It was not until 1305 that Wallace was captured, tried with full ceremonial in Westminster Hall, and hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. But the Scottish war was one in which, as a chronicler said, “every winter undid every summer’s work”. Wallace was to pass the torch to Robert Bruce.

There is nothing dirty about the anatomy. I love the anatomy; it is my birthright, my legacy, my very parentage. I love its ceremony and its pomp; I love the doctor's feigned authority and the spectators' awe and civility. But amid all the bloodletting, cutting, lecturing, banqueting, torch-lighting, and debauchery, the scientists - ... - are doing something important. Like the Egyptians before them, they are building the foundations of a civilization.